Unions demand proof of allegation

Topeka  House Speaker Mike O’Neal on Friday accused union members of making threats and sexually explicit comments, while union leaders denied the allegations and demanded that O’Neal show evidence to back up his charges.

In a news conference, O’Neal said he would investigate video from Thursday’s demonstration by several dozen union members, and was considering banning union lobbyists who participated from the House gallery or other areas of the Capitol.

House Democratic Leader Paul Davis of Lawrence said he didn’t think O’Neal could do that.

“This is not the speaker’s building. This is the people’s building,” Davis said.

Jane Carter, executive director of the Kansas Organization for State Employees, said it would be “a sad day” if unions weren’t allowed to lobby and represent themselves in the Capitol.

On Thursday, more than 50 union members were kicked out of the House gallery as they shouted “vote no” on a bill that workers said will restrict their ability to participate in political campaigns.

O’Neal said the union members tried to bully legislators during their stay at the Capitol.

“These tactics included verbal threats and sexually explicit comments to female legislators and staff," O’Neal said in a written statement entered into the House Journal.

Union leaders said O’Neal's allegations were untrue.

Prior to being escorted by state troopers out of the House gallery, union members had posted themselves outside the House chamber to urge legislators as they walked by to vote against the bill.

At a news conference Friday, Carter, Judy Pierce, with the Machinists Union from Wichita, and Pat Kirkman, who recently retired from the Teamsters, said they were in three separate locations with union members outside the House chamber, and they heard no one making obscene remarks to female legislators or staff. And they said they heard no one getting verbally aggressive with other legislators.

“I certainly didn’t hear anything that would have been inappropriate,” Kirkman said. “I heard a lot of them asking legislators to vote no. Some of the men were saying please, which surprised me.”

Pierce said union members would not have stood for anyone making derogatory comments. Pierce said there were many law officers in the crowd and they would have made an arrest if someone got out of hand. There were no arrests.

The three union members, Davis and Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka said O’Neal should show evidence that someone was subjected to sexually explicit comments or apologize for his accusations.

O’Neal said he had verified from at least six people the use of profanity on the part of demonstrators. He said he would not reveal the names of those who said they were harassed out of respect for their rights of privacy. He said there was also a male legislator who said he felt threatened when he was surrounded by several union members.

The dispute is over House Bill 2130, which would ban unions from making paycheck deductions for political activities and prohibit public employee unions from endorsing candidates. It was approved 75-46, with only Republican support, and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

The measure was backed by the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity and Kansas Chamber of Commerce. The billionaire Koch brothers who run Wichita-headquartered Koch Industries and contribute to many conservative causes are prominent figures in both groups.

When the union members shouted during the final vote, O’Neal called it the most disrespectful display he had seen in the House in his 27 years as a legislator. The Kansas Republican Party issued a statement that “union thugs brought their street tactics to the Kansas House Chamber.”

Davis and Hensley said they didn’t condone the shouting by union members in the House gallery but understood the workers’ frustration.

“People act out when they are frustrated, angry or both. When you take the rights of people away from them, people get angry,” Hensley said.

More like this story on LJWorld.com

Comments

The same Koch brothers that want businesses to have the right to give as much money to candidates as they please and send lobbyists to state and federal congresses, want to take this right away from unions...unbelievable! Wake up people. Democracy is about putting the power in the hands of the many, not the few. Why should the business elite have the only say in negotiations? What a sad day and the worst is that some of you who voted republican are going to get it handed to you. Somebody please give the state senate a shot of reality before they vote.

What these wingnuts fail to realize is that the same legal decision (citizens united...) that gives the Koch's this right also gives unions this right. Unions ARE corporations, legally.

Thus, no matter what kind of crap these folks pass to attempt to limit some citizens ability to participate in politics, it will all be shot down in the end as their own strategies turn around and bite them in the ass.

kustrong, you are right. Democracy is about putting power in the hands of the many, not the few. As a Union Member, I do not appreciate that our membership (the many) have to give political contributions that the Union Bosses (the few) decide how to spend and who to support. In the last election they supported several candidates that I did not want to support. Oh yeh, they say you can opt out if you want. But if you do, you get harrassed and are the first to be layed off when the opportunity presents itself.
They claim that by stopping this practice they will eliminate the members ability to particpate in the political process. Bull - I participate in the political process on my own and don't need to be directed like a puppet.

Unions represent less than 7% of the private sector workforce, and in Kansas it's much smaller than that.

I suspect that you are very much in the minority politically within your union. If not, then you need to organize with those who think like you to make the changes you see necessary. Or man up and get your refund on political contributions.

If you don't want to do that, I suggest that you seek out opportunities outside the union in this "right-to-work" state. Otherwise, quit whining.

I think if there are abuses at unions w/regards to political funds, that should be addressed.

But in the light of the Citizens United ruling opening the floodgates for corporate political spending, to take away the ability of unions to have their say is nothing but a forced unilateral disarmament of unions while corporations are simultaneously gearing up for full-scale political war.

Sounds like you don't work for the Union huh? don't really know what it's like to actually work and earn pay....maybe you should do some research on what was here first and gain some loyalty to your country. Otherwise, quit whining.

It's remarkable to juxtapose the manner in which this news story is written by a liberal Kansas reporter with the manner in which liberal reporters all over the country reported allegations of racial comments purportedly made by Tea Party members to black congressmen in March of 2010. The tenor of the J-W story today is that O'Neal has no proof of what he said and that the conduct complained of was merely done in the heat of battle, throwing in a de rigueur reference to the Koch brothers for good measure.

In contrast, when liberal reporters at the national level took on the Tea Party story in March of 2010, the tenor of the reports was universally that what had been complained of had happened, no questions asked, and that all Tea Partiers were evil racists. When videotape later demonstrated that no racial comments of any kind had been made, the reporters were all off doing something else.

It's also remarkable how so many Lawrence leftists continue to carp about the J-W's political coverage when its chief Topeka reporter is so clearly one of their own.

I suppose we can't rule out that these union protesters have adopted Tea Party behaviors but absent evidence this seems to be more of what we've seen in Wisconsin -- an 'ends justify the means' strategy of lies, trickery, and power-grabbing disrespect for constitutional respect for the minority.

Still, I don't find the allegation impossible given the outburst the other day in the gallery. People say and do reprehensible things when they believe they're being disrespected, railroaded, and taken advantage of (whether that's realistic or just the result of a steady diet of propaganda).

Tom, You are having too much fun with these rats running around disoriented because their pied piper has been voted out and they have no one to blindly follow. Rothschild can not even be taken seriously or considered a serious journalist. More of a Radical Liberal Blogger the way he spins the facts to the far left.

What makes anyone believe Scott Rothschild is a liberal? Has he declared such? Neither the CJ nor LJW are liberal newspapers. In fact of the news media has been bought up by the likes of Murdoch and other like thinkers.

From a NOT liberal thinker:

David Stockman - "GOP guiding nation towards financial ruin"

"In 1982, 1983, and 1984, Reagan signed a series of tax hikes (PDF) that, according to Stockman, recovered 40 percent of the original 1981 tax cut. Meanwhile, unemployment fell from nearly 11 percent in 1982 to 7.4 percent by Election Day 1984, and inflation slowed."

Years later, Stockman says, George W. Bush and his crew repeated "in much greater magnitude the errors we made in the early '80s. A massive increase in defense spending, a massive reduction in the revenue base [via long-term tax cuts], and not even an effort at spending cuts. Then the economy finally collapsed as a result of the credit crisis."

He opposed extending the Bush tax cuts for middle- and high-income Americans, and now he has a simple three-part prescription: First, cut military spending by $100 to $150 billion a year. (Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called for just $78 billion in cuts over the next five years.) "Are the Chinese going to come and bomb 33,000 Wal-Marts in the United States and destroy their export economy?" asks Stockman, who considers both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars foolish.

His second point is classic deficit-hawkery: Apply a means test to Medicare and Social Security. His third: "Massively raise taxes." His favorite device: a Tobin tax, named after Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin, which would be levied on financial transactions.

"We have a massive casino that is doing nothing but churning transactions by the millisecond, robots trading with each other, as a result of the Fed juicing the system continuously with overnight money that's free," Stockman says. "There's no productive value for Main Street or the real US economy." Such a tax could generate $100 billion annually (PDF). Stockman also fancies a version of Europe's value-added tax on consumption. "High taxes aren't good," he says. "But at the end of the day, you have to pay your bills as a government."

On MSNBC's Countdown, he called the GOP "the free-lunch party of tax cuts."

Stockman counters that Republicans' taxes bad/tax cuts good mantra is disingenuous. "I don't think those kinds of propositions are appropriate, and you could call them a lie if you really wanted to use rhetoric," he says. "They can't say government is too big if they're saying hands off defense. It's not responsible to say government is the problem when you've embraced 95 percent of the dollars.

"It's very dismaying," he adds, "to see that 30-year descent into the kind of nihilism, know-nothingism that is represented by the Republican Party today." It's not the Gipper's GOP anymore.

The billionaires pay taxes like millionaires due to the loop hole and tax cuts. Unions do more than give a stronger voice for working persons, at the bargaining table. the establish stronger wage and benefit packages for non union labor. Most trade unions establish standards of knowledge and craftsmanship. The time of the legislature should be pointed at industries and corporations that hire illegally. Construction, roofing, agriculture, a multiple of companies hire illegal workers, giving our jobs away. Once free of work force safe guards, and under the table anyway, the work is not held to the standard.

I guess, TomShewmon, that you agree with Gov. Walker, that unions are just communist organizations that ought to be suppressed. That was the implication of his remark that Reagan's suppression of the air traffic controlers' union led to the collapse of Communism. That's historical nonsense, of course, but revealing of the ideological premises of the radical right-wingers.
Of course, it was a union, Solidarity, that started the movement that undermined the authoritarian ("Communist") governments of Eastern Europe. Could that be why the new right-wing governors are so determined to undermine unions? Because unions allow ordinary workers to stand up to tyrants?

The billionaires pay taxes like millionaires due to the loop hole and tax cuts. Unions do more than give a voice for working persons at the bargaining table. They help establish stronger wage and benefit packages for non union labor. Most trade unions establish standards of knowledge and craftsmanship. The time of the legislature SHOULD be pointed at industries and corporations that hire illegally. Construction, roofing, agriculture, a multiple of companies hire illegal workers, giving our jobs away. Once free of work force safe guards, and under the table anyway, the work is not held to standard

Just another example of government intrusion into the rights of American citizens to participate in their democracy as they see fit.

It's a sad day in America when privileged lawmakers acting on behalf of the ultra-wealthy wage war against underpaid state workers and hard working blue collar workers who represent what little is left of America's great tradition of manufacturing things rather than simply trying to create wealth our of wealth in the Vegas style casino we call the stock market. These union members represent vocations that are what enabled America to come from behind in just a few short years in the 1940's to save the world from fascist aggression - America came to produce a mind boggling flow of products that enabled our fighting forces to gain the upper hand.

Fast forward just a couple generations and we had a political party that essentially killed manufacturing in favor of finance; fast forward another generation or two and now that party is engaged in open trench warfare across our country attacking what little is left of that proud tradition. It is despicable and shameful. O'Neal and his pals whine like petulant babies about lack of respect but they have earned nothing but disrespect for so maliciously attacking American workers and their history of contribution to building a middle class and making America a leader among nations.

Amen. When someone wants to silence a voice, it means they are afraid. It means they are acting from an unjustified and indefensible position. To tell a citizen that he does not have the right to petition his government for the redress of grievances is unconstitutional! This is how dictators and kings act!

It is a shame that the talented, hardworking people in Kansas who are being stepped on could simply move away to someplace better. Leave Kansas to these ugly greedy men.

So O'Neal is a lawyer and he is making accusations without evidence? He's relying on secret accusers? Six witnesses and not one has the courage to publicly state that they were verbally assaulted? And only six people heard these shouts? In a public building?

What are the odds that O'Neal turns up any evidence in the video that he is examining.? 1,000 to 1? 10,000 to 1? 1,000,000 to 1? I would estimate that he will find evidence of his accusations about the time that the Koch brothers can only afford to eat Ramen noodles.

Again...O'Neal is a lawyer and he thinks that it is acceptable to make accusations before he has evidence to back things up? What kind of lawyer does that?

Or when black legislators from Washington (lawyers) accused white protesters of using the "n" word 16 times at a health bill demonstration, without any video or audio evidence to back up such claims.

Who needs evidence?

The real issue here is according to the left, race is a more protected (read: important) category than gender. When someone screams racism, it's front page news on every media outlet available. And evidence is not necessary. When someone screams sexism, evidence is demanded, and it barely makes the local news.

I also find it interesting that our ideologically tainted and activist Supreme Court majority used the Citizens United decision to allow corporations to corrupt our political process by allowing nontransparent contributions (including from foreign corporations controlled by communist nations) to swamp all comers with massive hidden cash flows to throw elections in America, and it was done on the absurd rationale of "free speech".

If that kind of corruption of our democratic process can be called free speech, how could it possible under Citizens United that the relative pittance involved in the process of workers voluntarily opting to have a few dollars subtracted from each paycheck go toward their own union NOT be viewed in that same legal light?

Why is our state government wasting precious time and money on issues like attacking state workers and blue collar workers in the private sector and resisting reforms to the health insurance industry when they are likely unconstitutional as well as counterproductive and cause harm to the majority of Kansans?

In other news: "A Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts is raising the stakes in the nation’s fight over the future of public employee unions, saying emails aren’t enough to show support and that it is time to “get a little bloody.”
“I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Ma.) told a crowd in Boston on Tuesday rallying in solidarity for Wisconsin union members...."
http://nhjournal.com/2011/02/23/dem-rep-to-unions-time-to-get-%E2%80%98bloody%E2%80%99/
You might want to take a first-aid kit with you to the union-sponsored tantrum in Topeka today.

There's obviously an anti-union movement going on across the country and it's being spearheaded and coordinated by Republicans who've been bought and paid for by big business/banks. Wake up!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Below are the names of the 20 female members of the Kansas House. Mike O'Neal claims that some of these representatives were the targets of sexist remarks. He will not reveal any names, but there is nothing stopping the representatives themselves from coming forward. Sexism should not be condoned. These representatives should be encouraged to overcome their fear and point out the guilty individuals. State representatives should set an example. If you are afraid to stand up for what's right, how do you expect to change things?

I never assume either side is telling the truth. It did hit me that a woman legislator would not come forward and say someone said something inappropriate. As a leader she actually should feel a sense of duty to encourage decorum. I also wonder if some person said something the entire group would be banned. It would make sense that individual would be banned or told to behave, probably apologize,. or charged if he threatened physical harm and said nasty things. Shutting out an entire population. is a bit wide. I use to work as a waitress in Topeka, and all the legislators did not act appropriately, some of them would qualify as drunken louts. Some of them decent farmer types. Most of them were pompous but ok.

I don't read any assumptions of truth from question4u's post. I think he (she?) makes an excellent point that our legislators should set an example for all sexually exploited victims and have the courage to come forward and identify those who verbally assaulted them. If they refuse, one needs to ask why? Is it because they truly are afraid? One would then need to ask, afraid of what? And if they are afraid to come forward, what example does this set for the people of Kansas, for whom they are expected to lead?

In other words, if this really happened the guilty should face the consequences. If it did not, then the people of Kansas should call O'Neal's bluff.

Pubs haven't done anything the Dems haven't done. Pandering to the base is what all politicians do. Of course strengthening their position in the next election was a part of the consideration. Getting re-elected is the primary job of any politician, of whatever party.

Looking at that list of 20 female legislators, how many could pick them out of a lineup?

These are folks who were at the Statehouse for one day, right? And the suggestion is they recognized female Republican legislators vs. female Democratic legislators, and also recognized female non-legislators as members of the House GOP staff?

That's pretty amazing. I encourage those of you who believe O'Neal's remarks to pick some of those folks out of a lineup. You have as much exposure to their appearance as these protesters do.

I'm sure all those construction workers who've been working like ants on the Capitol for the last 8 years are union. 300 million dollars in upgrades and repairs to the Capitol building...a new underground garage even...so the legislators won't have to walk a half-block in the rain...that's all the union's fault too. It's the UNIONS who're bankrupting this country! LOL!

Meanwhile, the Republo-Tea Party of Ireland, which drank the Kool-aid of laissez-faire capitalism, bailed out all their banker friends, and then turned on the people with massive spending cuts .......

just got annihilated at the polls today after dominating Irish politics for 6 decades. The party that won more votes than anyone else in each and every election since 1932, will take about 15% of the vote.

In my humble opinion, union members did not gain support from the public OR the legislature by shouting from the gallery while the House was in session.

The House is a lost cause, the governor is a lost cause. The state Senate is the only group providing a glimmer of hope to those of us to the left of Metternich. Senators surely heard about the brouhaha in the House and maybe it will cause them to vote more along the way the union members would like...but I highly doubt it.

You want to know who's bankrupting the country? Unscrupulous and greedy flesh-easting lizard people on Wall Street and their bought and paid for government (non union) cronies, i.e. BROWNBACK, O'NEAL, et al.

I bet you didn't know there was such a thing, but you obviously have not been paying attention.